A Taste for Books

“It’s nice, isn’t it? Because basically we all have similar reading tastes.” I was absorbed in scanning the authors names on the spines of the books in our community’s ‘library.’ I looked up to see an acquaintance. He was talking to me about the book selection at our library, a collection of books donated by residents wishing to share their love of reading. It contains an ever-changing mix of over 1,000 books, kept in alphabetical author order by volunteers. Our library has one rule: “read & return.”

I nodded and we chatted for just a minute and he moved on to his golf game. I continued to peruse the books, thinking that I didn’t really have the same tastes of my neighbors at all. Our library has a lot of Grisham, Patterson, Grafton, Koontz, Stephen King and the like. And someone here is a big fan of Maeve Binchy. Not that there is anything wrong with these authors works. They’re just not to my liking.

Now that I think about it, no one even among my family or close friends really likes the type of books I fancy. I favor Japanese and British literature. I’d occasionally find some Brit Lit here at our little library, but I’d never seen a book from a Japanese author. I’m pretty certain that unless I put it there on the shelf myself, there never will be one. Hey, that’s a good idea, I think. But, when I get home and go through my limited collection, I find that I cannot bear to part with any of my Japanese authored books. I’m one of those people who likes to go back and reread favorite books, or at least portions of them. Since the Japanese books are harder to come by for me now, I can’t find the generosity in me to donate them.

The local public libraries here are small, with limited collections. They charge a fee for non-residents, like me. They will help you order  books from other libraries, but it’s a complicated, lengthy process. So, I’m relegated to buying used books online from Abebooks.com or putting them on my Kindle account at Amazon.

I think back to the days when I had a library card to one of the largest public libraries in the nation. I think of the numerous used books stores that dot the city. I think of my former job that gave me access to a huge university library. I used to walk over on my lunch hour. I’d walk up to the 2nd floor, which held the library’s foreign fiction. I knew exactly where the Japanese and British novels were. I’d spend 1/2 hour or so choosing 3-4 books and walk back to my office already devouring one of the books as I walked, feeling like the luckiest person in the world.

When the longlist for The Man Booker Prize, an annual contemporary fiction award, given to writers from the British Commonwealth and Ireland, (like a British Pulitzer?) came out in July I could usually put my hands immediately on most of the 12 books, with the goal to read all of the books before the winner was announced in mid-October. It was a goal I never accomplished but always enjoyed trying.

There was a sci-fi TV show when I was a kid called “Twilight Zone.” My favorite episode was one called “Time Enough at Last,” based on a short story of the same title by Lyn Venable. It told the tale of a beleaguered, henpecked, myopic, bank teller with a micromanaging boss. The teller loved nothing more than reading and sneaks down to the bank’s vault one day to get in a bit of reading. While inside the vault the world is annihilated in a nuclear holocaust. He exits to find the town in rubbles and everyone dead. He’s walks about dazed for awhile, then stumbles across the public library, which is still standing. He realizes this is an opportunity he’s dreamed of most of his life. All the time in the world to read all the books he wants. He chooses a stack of books and settles in to read, but trips or something, knocks over a shelf of books and breaks his only pair of eyeglasses. Being farsighted and realizing he’ll never be able to read a word, he begins to weep.

I’m not wallowing in pity for myself, but I am envious when I read online that there is an actual book reading group, in NY I think, that is devoted solely to reading and discussing  nominees and winners of the Man Booker Prize. Once I found a Man Booker prize winning book by Peter Carey on the shelf at our community library. I love Carey's style of writing. I read and returned the book and now harbor a secret fantasy that somewhere here in our community is a person, female or male, someone who donated that book, someone walking about, maybe someone that I already know, but somewhere here is someone with whom I may someday have discussions with about good books. And just maybe that someone will like to read my Japanese fiction...

Note: As I was taking a second look at this posting I noticed that I do have a duplicate of one of Kazuo Ishuguro's early novels, A Pale View of the Hills. And even if he is really a Japanese person who was raised in England, (his parents emigrated when he was just 5 years old or so), his writing style contains elements of both British and Japanese styles of literature.  I'm going over right now and donate it. :-)